Lift kit for T5 4 Motion - supplier?

[Murphenzo]

On a related note, I figured this would be the right place to share the latest off road outing in my T5. Most of my off roading so far has been on the beach (which it loves) and basic dirt roads. Last weekend we headed out out to the Sundown National Park, about 3.5 hrs drive from Brisbane on the QLD/NSW border. Once you get to the gates you have 17km of rough, rocky, steep fire roads to get to the camp site.....which takes about 2.5 hours. It's slow going.

If I had of known what was out there I would have never brought the van, but I'm glad I did, because it f****** owned it! Getting down into the reedy creek camp site was seriously steep and had me pretty worried about getting out again. I figured with a few proper 4x4s in the group we'd get it out one way or another, so I gave it a shot.

Well, I wouldn't want to push it any further but it made it in and out of the place just fine. I had to hit some of the steeper climbs with a bit more speed that ideal to keep the engine on boost (no low range and all), but aside from that it was just fine. Ample traction, plenty of power and plenty of clearance. It survived 100% undamaged with no rock strikes under the car at all. I'm very very impressed!

As you imagine it got plenty funny looks and heaps of people coming up to check it out. You don't get soft roaders out in this park. It's all proper 4WDs.

As always, the pictures don't do justice to how steep any of this is. I mean it's nothing ridiculous. Any proper 4WD would crawl up this stuff in low range, but well, this van just shouldn't be able to do this so well!

These next two photos are pretty typical of a lot of the access road:




This is a screen cap from the video diving up out of reedy creek. This was probably one of the steepest sections.

[Sunny43.5]

Wow that's almost as rough as the trails I ride on my dirt bike , that is pretty impressive for a van . We came close to an off road excursion a couple of years back when we attempted to do the Condamine Gorge '14 River Crossing road , because ours has been "Lowered " the water crossings were deemed a disaster waiting to happen for us so we chickened out plus having our two kids in wheel chairs in the back was not a good idea in case of damage water intrusion etc.

[Murphenzo]

Wow that's almost as rough as the trails I ride on my dirt bike , that is pretty impressive for a van . We came close to an off road excursion a couple of years back when we attempted to do the Condamine Gorge '14 River Crossing road , because ours has been "Lowered " the water crossings were deemed a disaster waiting to happen for us so we chickened out plus having our two kids in wheel chairs in the back was not a good idea in case of damage water intrusion etc.

Haha! It's funny you mention that, because I drove home via condamine river road and all 14 of its river crossings! I definitely wouldn't have done that in a stock height van.....way too much risk of getting water in the diffs/gearbox/interior.

I watched a few others go through the first one before I decided to commit and do it. In the end none of them were deeper than about 300mm, which is right on the limit for a stock height van (according to the factory).

It's a really nice drive through there though, well worth doing. I was tempted to camp in there for an extra night, but the whole place was pretty packed out being the easter long weekend.

[Sunny43.5]

Just as well you didn't camp the place has pretty gnarly snakes , we stopped a few hundred metres further back before the first eastern crossing and almost stepped on a large red belly black on the way down to the river .PS not stock height it,s been lowered 40mm so even worse for us .

[Murphenzo]

Yeah, you definitely made the right choice then. Some of the crossings (especially at the western end) are pretty rough with pretty big rocks that you simply can't see through the water. Looking at the above photos again, there was a fair bit more water when I came through. All of the crossings were running at a decent rate.

[Murphenzo]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCE-...ature=youtu.be

[Sunny43.5]

Pretty impressive video I would imagine that terrain is hard on tyres . I know if I rode that track on my MX bike the knobbly tyres would have been ripped up as we hit that sort of terrain at speed so the tyres take a hiding . The bike spends most of it's time just spinning the back wheels to keep forward motion as you tend to lift the front wheel to skip over the approaching rocks so the rears cop the most abuse . We do take ours along a dirt access road at the MX park with trailer etc and crawl to prevent bottoming out on the rough sections ,

[Murphenzo]

The tires were my biggest concern, because those rocks are pretty sharp, but they came out ok. Definitely some wear and tear, but no damage as such. I was pretty careful with my line selections to avoid sidewall damage.

[GUV]

That's seriously impressive Murph, this is exactly why I'm in here to see how capable the 4motion is, we currently have a 2door Prado but I do miss having a vw van. I haven't been in Severn for many years but it looks like it hasn't changed much, is your van auto or manual?
I've been considering towing a camper trailer in there, did you see any trailers in there?

Sorry for all the questions but you have got me fired up about Severn and 4motion vans.

Thanks

GUV

[Murphenzo]

Back when I built this thing I had the same problem trying to find good info on just how capable they were, so very happy to share my experiences with this.

My van is a manual. Considering all of the issues that the early T5 autos have, I don't think they'd be a good choice for off-road, especially sand. If it wasn't for the fact that they break easily, an auto would do a very good job of making up for the lack of a low range. Then the DSG....well....who knows how well that will behave and hold up in the hard stuff?

It's definitely very capable of getting in and out of places like that, but you do need to be on your game. I did most of the track a bit slower than the other guys and had to be a bit more careful of the lines I chose having such a long wheelbase a completely unprotected underside.

If I did it all again, I think I'd try and stretch the budget to a T5.1 manual with the locking diff. The 2L twin turbo TD simply boosts earlier and doesn't have such a snappy power delivery. The other thing the I think is key is not getting the heavy duty seikel kits if you don't need them (mine is running the base "desert" kit. Over rate the springs and you'll be losing the already limited amount of flex these things have. In most of the videos of other vans on you tube you see them picking up wheels much more easily than mine does.

As for trailers, there were a few in there. There was one bloke that managed to get his defender and a big camper trailer out onto the rats castle loop. That was a good effort!